Looking back can be a fun and sometimes be an eye opening experience. When it's your primary focus, your life is tied to the past and not moving forward. The only place you can free yourself from the inertia of the past is in the present.

It's a hard lesson to learn even though on paper it's factual and easy. The lesson that we give lip service to learning is that the past is over. However, our words often are not backed up by our actions, and that keeps us lip locked to the past.

The karma of your past will follow you wherever you go until you acknowledge it and let it go – then you'll start to grow.

A steady diet of the past makes us shrinking violets. We are bound by the time and place of "Memory Lane" wanting everything new to remain the same. It's a strategy that only produces cobwebs and constriction, not to mention codgery, if that's even a word.

If the past isn't acting as a reference or springboard, you are diving head first into an unfilled, concrete pool. The past is filled with solid things that can hurt you, over and over. Just the continued assertion that "the past was better," causes you more bumps than you deserve.

How can anything live up to something that doesn't exist?

The past existed; the future isn't here yet. What's left?

Now is where life happens. If your life isn't happening, you are ignoring now and trading in your life for a handful of memories. The Manhattan Indians got a better deal.

Action is the accelerant that unties you from the past. The secret hidden in plain sight is that you can only take action now. You can't untie a knot that's not right in front of you now.

Action unmoors you from the past and helps you set sail for a future free from the confines of a tethered slip.

The past will lose its hold on you when you commit yourself to do. Do something now. Put the accent on action and you will set something in motion – something more than a faded notion.

You have the ability to create in each new moment, but you will only recreate the past if you don't take action.

Ask yourself this life producing question: "What action can I take today that will make the past fade away?"